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Real-life incidents have inspired so many films all over the globe but sometimes even films inspire real-life incidents. That’s not it, cinema also keeps the potential of solving age-old unsolved mysteries and Disney’s animation film Frozen has done something similar.
Frozen has helped a researcher crack a 62-year-old Dyatlov Pass incident. In a long Twitter thread, the researcher named Dr Robin George Andrews has explained the details of the case which was a source of several conspiracy theories once.
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“Buckle up, everyone, this story is *wild*. The 62-year-old Dyatlov Pass mystery, in which nine students died at the hands of an unknown force, has likely been solved thanks to the movie Frozen and gruesome car crash experiments.” he started the explanation by tweeting this.
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Buckle up, everyone, this story is *wild*.
The 62-year-old Dyatlov Pass mystery, in which nine students died at the hands of an unknown force, has likely been solved thanks to the movie Frozen and gruesome car crash experiments.
Me, for @NatGeo + thread! https://t.co/BOE9cUVEgb
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
But before explaining the solution, let us tell you about the case which has been explained by the researcher also. It so happened that in 1959, a group of students and their instructor went to the Ural Mountains for a mountaineer expedition. Something extremely terrible happened there and all of them died a gruesome death.
After a snowstorm, their bodies were found in a very bad and devastating state. This led to a lot of conspiracy theories and people suggested it was a cause of some unknown force like alien, yeti etc.
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In what has become known as the Dyatlov Pass incident, ten members of the Urals Polytechnic Institute in Yekaterinburg—nine students and one sports instructor who fought in World War II—headed into the frigid wilderness on a skiing expedition on January 23, 1959. 1/x
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
One student turned back after experiencing joint pain.
He never saw his friends again.
2/x
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
The team made camp on February 1, pitching a large tent on the snowy slopes of Kholat Saykhl, whose name can be interpreted as “Dead Mountain” in the language of the region’s Indigenous Mansi people. Ominous, sure – but these were experienced mountain hikers. 3/x pic.twitter.com/bcYxpL445C
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
The nine were never heard from again.
When a search team arrived at Kholat Saykhl a few weeks later, the tent was found just barely sticking out of the snow, and it appeared cut open from the inside. The next day, the first of the bodies was found near a cedar tree. 4/x pic.twitter.com/fu4BKSzIPf
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
Eventually, all nine of the team members’ bodies were found: scattered around the mountain’s slope, some in a baffling state of undress; some of their skulls and chests had been smashed open; others had eyes missing, and one lacked a tongue. Some had traces of radioactivity. 5/x pic.twitter.com/voLOxMttN7
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
A criminal investigation kept things hush hush, and had no idea what to conclude except that it was some insurmountable natural force. The lack of details in the secretive state, and the grim nature of the scene, gave rise to all kinds of wild conspiracy theories. 6/x pic.twitter.com/5TYp2pDHmz
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
Apart from alien abductions, secret Cold War military experiments, attacks by the Mansi, romantic disputes, clandestine nuclear tests and even Yetis were suggested. A freak whirlwind making mind-melting low-frequency noises was also recently suggested. 7/x pic.twitter.com/NmIwv9Qwch
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
Then in 2019 when Russia re-opened the case, the cause was suggested to be an Avalanche. But nobody believed it because the injuries were so gruesome that people couldn’t believe an avalanche can cause it.
When Russia reopened the case (again) in 2019, and concluded it was an avalanche in 2020, most people couldn’t believe it, because a) the Russian government is famously truth-averse, and b) the theory just didn’t stack up. 8/x pic.twitter.com/LGCENjJoTN
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
The slope was too shallow for an avalanche to occur, there was no snowfall to load up the slope to trigger an avalanche, there was at least a nine-hour delay between the campsite being made and the hypothetical avalanche, and the search teams saw no evidence of one. 9/x
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
Most importantly, perhaps, was the nature of the injuries: no way, people thought, could an avalanche cause such severe and gory injuries.
So two scientists, snow aficionado Johan Gaume and landslide expert Alexander Puzrin, decided to team up and take on the mystery. 10/x pic.twitter.com/PMdiJhvPMG
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
The slope issue was quickly dismissed: not only did the local topography give the illusion that the slope was mild – it was actually somewhat steeper – but a weak layer of underlying snow made any avalanche perfectly possible there. 11/x pic.twitter.com/9VsCmI2CE7
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
Sure, there was no snowfall that night. But strong winds, recorded in the victims’ diaries, brought snow down from up on high to the slope just above their tent. This took time to accumulate, hence the nine-hour delay. 12/x pic.twitter.com/55Xh8rVVDX
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
But Dr Robin George seems to have an explanation now after watching the animated film Frozen. He adds, “This is where things get extremely bizarre. How could such a small collapse have caused such traumatic injuries? For that, the team turned to the movie Frozen. Yes, that movie. 13/x”.
This is where things get extremely bizarre. How could such a small collapse have caused such traumatic injuries?
For that, the team turned to the movie Frozen. Yes, that movie. 13/x pic.twitter.com/cZuoonidJf
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
“A few years back, Gaume was struck by how well the movement of snow was depicted in the 2013 Disney movie Frozen—so impressed, in fact, that he decided to ask its animators how they pulled it off. He ended up going to Hollywood to chat to them. 14/x”
A few years back, Gaume was struck by how well the movement of snow was depicted in the 2013 Disney movie Frozen—so impressed, in fact, that he decided to ask its animators how they pulled it off. He ended up going to Hollywood to chat to them. 14/x pic.twitter.com/Nj34ejn7vo
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
Further explaining the case and how it was an avalanche which was the true case he adds-
Gaume modified the film’s snow animation code for his avalanche simulation models, albeit with a decidedly less entertaining purpose: to simulate the impacts that avalanches would have on the human body. 15/x pic.twitter.com/BZmBSz41sd
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
Gaume modified the film’s snow animation code for his avalanche simulation models, albeit with a decidedly less entertaining purpose: to simulate the impacts that avalanches would have on the human body. 15/x pic.twitter.com/BZmBSz41sd
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
But they still needed to know the forces an icy block, tumbling at a person during an avalanche, would exert on the human body. And it turns out that, in the 1970s, General Motors launched blocks at dead humans to turn them into informative tapenade. 16/x pic.twitter.com/HMBU6TAGoJ
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
These tests were grim, but were used to calibrate the safety of seatbelts. As it happens, they were the perfect experiments for the pair to use to understand the fates of those nine students. 17/x
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
Some of the cadavers were braced with rigid supports while others weren’t. Back on the slopes of Kholat Saykhl, the team members had placed their bedding atop their skis. This meant that the avalanche, which hit them as they slept, struck an unusually rigid target. 18/x pic.twitter.com/rQkQfIqOLA
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
Computer simulations precisely calibrated, the pair found that a small avalanche, one that released maybe a 5×5 meter block of rigid ice, would have crushed the sleeping students, giving some those horrible blunt force trauma injuries – awful, but not immediately fatal. 19/x
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
The avalanche that appears to have occurred on February 1, 1959, on Kholat Saykhl was an incredibly rare type of event. But rare events do occur, and this one could have come to pass only at that exact spot, at that exact moment, during that one very wintery night. 20/x pic.twitter.com/pOJU6bLnxR
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
However, he adds that the case is still not completely solved and some parts of the film Frozen like the weird radioactivity remain puzzling.
The case isn’t closed. Some of the details, like the weird radioactivity, remain puzzling. But this paper is arguably first time a concrete scientific explanation has been slotted in to this truly bizarre mystery. 21/x
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
What happened after the avalanche is unknown, but it looks like they cut themselves out of the tent, dragged their injured friends away, tried to shelter, and died of hypothermia. The able-bodied students could have survived, but they chose to try and save their friends. 22/x
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
“This isn’t just a mystery,” Puzrin told me. “This is a story of courage and friendship.” 23/x
— Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋 (@SquigglyVolcano) January 28, 2021
The thread continues with more tweets.
What are your thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments section.
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